Victoria Taylor

Dr Victoria Taylor, BA (Hons), MRes, AFHEA is an award-winning aviation historian who completed her PhD thesis on the Luftwaffe and National Socialism in the Third Reich at the University of Hull and Sheffield Hallam University. Her main historical focus is on British and German aviation during the interwar period and the Second World War. In recognition of her PhD research, she was awarded the 2020 Royal Air Force Museum Doctoral Academic Prize in 2021. She also completed her Masters in Historical Research (MRes) on Britain’s wartime and post-war mythologization of Operation CHASTISE – better known as the ‘Dambusters raid’ – at Hull, for which she was awarded the Royal Air Force Museum’s RAF Centenary Master’s Academic Prize in 2019.

Victoria has published academic book chapters and articles with the likes of the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Royal Air Force, and Cambridge University Press. In addition, she has contributed to numerous popular history magazines such as BBC History Extra, Iron Cross Magazine and Britain at War. Since 2018, she has widely featured as an onscreen expert in history documentaries made for BBC Two, Channel 4, Channel 5, the Smithsonian Channel, History Hit, and Sky History. More recently, she served as an assistant producer, historical consultant, and on-screen expert for Series 11 of the Smithsonian Channel’s flagship aviation programme ‘Air Warriors’.

Victoria regularly disseminates her expertise through radio and podcasts, having served as narrator, co-writer, and historical consultant on ‘Inside the Battle of Britain’: the second series of the Royal Air Force Benevolent Fund podcast series ‘All Stations’. This five-part series was nominated for a Best Independent Podcast award by the Radio Academy in 2021. In 2020, she presented and co-wrote a programme on Supermarine's development of the Spitfire for BBC Radio 4 (‘Spitfire: From The Ashes’), in addition to serving as an expert contributor alongside Diane Morgan and Matthew Parris for the 'Great Lives' episode on Air Chief Marshal Sir Hugh Dowding.

She has discussed her research on a number of podcasts, from James Holland and Al Murray’s ‘We Have Ways Of Making You Talk’, to Dan Snow’s ‘History Hit’. Her contributions via the media have spanned topics that include the Luftwaffe, the Royal Air Force, the evacuation of Dunkirk, the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, the Combined Allied Bomber Offensive, the Dambusters, the V1 and V2 programmes, a variety of military aircraft, and many more. She is an Ambassador for both the National Spitfire Project and the Royal Air Force Charitable Trust, and has given talks at the Imperial War Museum, the Royal Air Force Museum, the Royal Aeronautical Society, and in the House of Lords.

Victoria's book, Eagle Days, will be published by Head of Zeus.